WHEELER AND WOOLSEY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 329, 23 January 1932, Page 25 (Supplement)

WHEELER AND WOOLSEY.

Nothing but a mythical kingdom background could have framed such a side-splitting, wholly delectable comedy as the latest Bert Wheeler-Roberfe Woolsey fun-vehicle, ‘‘Cracked Nuts,” which commenced at the Theatre Royal to-day. Dorothy Lee, the little comedienne who has been seen with the team of film comedians in all of their vehicles since *' Rio Rita ” and “ The Cuckoos,” is featured opposite Wheeler.

“ The mythical kingdom background or some other setting equally fantastic doubles the mirthful entertainment qualities of a comedy,” declared Edward Cline, the director, who is a veteran of film comedies that date back to Charlie Chaplin’s earliest two-reelers. “If spectators of a comedy have a sense of a too-great realism of background in* talkies they lose some of the enjoyment of the sheer healthful nonsense and hysterical fun of such a sound-celluloid caricature of life,” Cline declares. “ With the sky the limit for realism, as it is in the mythical kingdom setting, there is also no limit to the amount of fun a comedy can contain.”

An unusually charming little love story between Wheeler and Miss Lee is woven in with the countless laughs of “ Cracked Nuts.” Others in the cast include such comedy favourites as Edna May Oliver, Leni Stengel, Stanley Fields and Harvey Clark.